Ask Irritated June

Remember back in December when I started this cockamamie Ask June idea, and I told you all to direct your questions back at the original post from December? Do you have any idea how many &$##&@ questions were back at that site? And I had to SLOG through them, and keep track of which ones I answered and such, and man, was it getting annoying.

So tonight I went into Typepad and gee, do they ever make it convenient to go back into December to delete comments.

[Obligatory Henry photo.]

They start at today's date and only show you 50 comments a page, and you have to SCROLL to the bottom of each page, hit "older," wait 470 years, get 50 MORE comments, hit "older" again, as you GROW older, and finally after you've grown a Rip Van Winkle beard that has wedged itself into a log like in Snow White and Rose Red you finally get to the December 18 comments and I am telling you what.

So to make an agonizing story longer, I am saying that I went back and deleted all queries that were already querieied, and yes that is so a word, and I will answer all the leftover questions that are still on there, but from here on out please address all your Ask Junes right here. Under this cute picture of Henry.

Let's have another one before we begin, shall we?

Seriously. Who is ludicrously cute? His eyes are turning green, I think. No more baby blue kitten eyes pretty soon. Crap.

Conveniently, Sarah B. asks, "How many cats is too many? My husband thinks 2 is enough and 3 is a crowd. I tend to disagree."

As many of you know, Marvin has often told me that if I bring a fourth cat home, I might as well name it Divorced White Female. And the part where we have three is kind of a fluke, too. Let's face it, three tips you over the edge into crazy cat people.

See, when I met Marvin, I was 31 with two cats. And that appeals to any man. But somehow I reeled Marvin in with my Mr. Horkheimer and my Ruby, who was just a kitten.

Marvin had never lived with cats before, so the first year we were together I'd hear a lot of "OW!" from the other room. He did not catch the cats' subtle body language telling him to KNOCK IT OFF with the petting their fur backwards or rubbing the base of their tail or whatever annoying thing he was doing, and he got a lot of the scratches that first year. But still, he would say, "Cats are fascinating!"

Marvin used to like me a lot. So had my thing been collecting my own urine in tear collector bottles he'd have said, "Your urine is fascinating!"

Anyway, we'd been together a year when we found two-week-old Francis hanging off a vine in our backyard, having been abandoned by his cat mom because he was NUTS and she was trying to let NATURE TAKE ITS COURSE but ohhhhh no. Not with old cat woman around! So the plan was to nurse Fran to health by bottle feeding him and teaching him how to pee and stuff and if you think you can give a kitten up after you have done all that for him. And it was MARVIN who didn't want to give that lunatic creature up and here he still is in our house in a special padded room.

And you notice that both Mr. Horkheimer and Ruby are dead, but we keep replacing the cats to keep our quota of three. So Sarah, technically your husband is probably right, but once you get started on three, it seems normal. Which is probably how people with 19 kids feel, too.

Bell chimes in with, "What was Marvin's job before he became a teacher? And has he ever been on the cover of Rolling Stone?"

Right before he was a teacher, Marvin had some boring-ass computer job that paid a lot of money but totally wasn't him but was hard to give up because it paid a lot, kind of like prostitution. Cause man, do I ever know what that's like.

But before he did that (and he did that for six or seven years), he was a sound mixer for the movies, which means he recorded the dialog. It doesn't mean he created the sound effects, which for some reason is what people always think.

Don't ask me why he gave up that perfectly cool job to go work at a computer/prostitute job. At the time he said the sound mixing jobs were getting harder and harder to get, and he wanted something more reliable. Or something grownup like that.

Yes, he met a lot of celebrities. And no, he was never on the cover of the Rolling Stone. Gonna get my picture on the cover. Gonna buy five copies for my mother.

Bambi asks, "How do you hang your toilet paper–rolling toward the front or toward the back against the wall?"

Do you have any idea how bad I want to make the obvious joke about why a deer even needs toilet paper? Can you imagine how sick Bambi must get of deer and/or Walt Disney jokes? So I will abstain. Bambi, I prefer it so it rolls toward the front, but I am generally in a state of duress when I am putting it on, so I kind of also don't care.

Once Oprah timed how long it took to replace the toilet paper roll and it takes seven seconds. Time it once, you'll see. Seven seconds. And yet you know everyone in your house tries not to be the one to replace it.

Poor Winston never gets any pictures of himself in this blog anymore, now that the KITTEN gets all the attention. He is shipping himself out of here. That is IT.

Mary asks, "What hair care products do you use daily???"

Apparently this is very important to Mary, as it required three question marks. Do you think Mary wants hair as pretty as mine? Let's take an impromptu shot of my calm hair. It rained today, so this could be good.

Mmm-hmmm. Yes, Mary. Perhaps you are wondering so you know what NOT to use.

I will tell you what I use. I use everything on earth to weigh it down. Recently I was getting my color done and two women asked my hairdresser, "What can I use that won't weigh my hair down?" and I was aghast. I would hang free weights off this mess if I could.

So I use serious conditioner every day, then a leave-in conditioner (yes, really), then some sort of cream or gel, then sometimes a serum. And LOOK at it!

Carrie writes, with just a hint of despair, "June, I am writing to you in desperation! A week and a half ago, I adopted a dog from my local animal shelter and we have had quite the week and a half! She had an upper respiratory infection and has had to be on antibiotics, she ran away (which I'm sure is how she got to be a stray in the first place), and yesterday when I got home from work, she was out of her crate, but no one was home to have let her out! I figured the dog walker had not latched it all the way or something. Then, this morning, she escaped twice within 15 minutes from her crate. I put treats in there. I put toys in there. I tell her she's a good girl for being in there. Before you took Talullah to Doggie Day Care, did you crate train her? How did you keep her in there!?"

You know, maybe I should have an emergency Ask June, as well, since poor Carrie asked me this in March. When I went to link to her blog, I see that she still HAS the dog, so that's good.

I have heard of this from other dog owners, Carrie. I have a friend whose dog will stay in its crate all morning but when my friend comes home at lunch, if she takes too long to get to the crate, the dog lets itself out. So it was ABLE to get out all that time.

As for me, Tallulah was just a teeny puppy and it never occurred to her to try to escape the crate. Well, that first night, the one and only time I have ever actually heard her howl, it must have OCCURRED to her, but she never figured it out.

I would assume by now your dog likes the crate. They always tell you the dogs grow to love them, and mine did. Of course, now she sleeps on my face.

That is all for Ask June on this fine Friday which is almost Saturday, seeing as it took me 29 hours to delete all the old Qs. From now on, ask your Ask June questions here.

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35 thoughts on “Ask Irritated June”

Three quesstions:
First, when entering a note on my calendar about a party for my brother and soon-to-be-sister-in-law, I wrote, “Seth and Lara’s party”. Does my brother’s name need an apostrophe s, too? Should I have written, “Seth’s and Lara’s party?” I think I wrote it correctly, but I want to be sure.
Secondly, a family member gave us a fantastic tote bag with our family name embroidered on it. However, there is an inappropriate use (or is it usage?) of an apostrophe-s (or is it apostrophe ‘s’?). We get this all the time because our last name ends with ‘is’ and this seems to confuse people (although I’m increasingly aware that LOTS of people use the apostrophe-s with wild abandon ALL THE STINKIN’ TIME!!!) My question is, can I take out my seam-ripper and rip off the apostrophe-s, or would that be just as inappropriate?
Lastly, what IS the stinkin’ rule about names that end in ‘s’, such as Jones. I’ve seen it so many ways, I’ve lost touch with the correct way. So if our bag says, “The Jones’s”, what SHOULD it say? If an invitation says, “Please come to a party at Jennifer Jones’s home”, what SHOULD it say? Or worse, what if it said, “Please come to a party at the Joneses”? What then?
AAAAACCCCKKKKK! My English teaching-mother would flip over in her grave if she knew I was having this problem. Except that she’s not dead and has no grave. Yet.

So let me ask you something: does Marvin suddenly disappear on Saturday nights? Because when I’m at church on Sundays, sitting in the balcony, I look down at the congregation, and I see a man who looks JUST like Marvin from the back. And kind of from the side.
Is he cheating on you with a church-going redhead who plays flute and has 4 kids? You should look into that.

I really like all of the hair product suggestions you have in the comments here.
I have the same concerns that you have with your hair, and I also have a routine of washing, conditioning, leave in conditioner, blow until 80% dry, use the dryer that looks like a round hair brush,and straighten with a hair iron. It’s still frizzy, so I put in hot rollers. After I take those out I add a small dab of some sort of tacky cream ti make it smooth. Heaven forbid if it’s rainy or humid. It’s a lot of work.
My hair dresser says that she has 2 other clients with hair like mine. She calls us her “special needs” clients.
I’ll have to try the Kiehls styling stuff.

Dear June,
Where do all your cats sleep? I ask because my husband and I have one cat, who refuses to sleep at night unless some part of his cat-person is draped over some part of our person(s) at all times. I feel like that could get raucous with three cats.

Dear Ask June,
Did you receive the recipe I sent you for making your very own dog food for Tallulah? If so, did you ever try making it? If so, did she ever try eating it? If so, was it a success?
If the answer to all of this is no that might mean that the recipe was lost in the mail or that your mailman absconded with it to make his very own dog food for his very own dog and poor Tallulah will never know the joy of home made with love food.
Please let me know if I need to hand write out another recipe card or if you want me to just cut and paste and send it electronically for free. Or maybe you want me to butt out of what you feed your furry creatures.
Your very nosy reader,

Oh I agree on the saving things. Enjoy them now!
I thought I knew the answer to this one, but since I am seeing infractions on a daily basis, even on the news and in advertisements, I’m wondering if I am wrong or the rules have changed.
It isn’t “less calories”, is it? I think it is “fewer calories”. Likewise I heard something today about an “amount” of people. Do they mean like 2 tons of people? It should be “number” of people.
Have they changed this rule? Am I just being silly about this stuff? Maybe I’m just making it all up, but it just doesn’t sound right to me. Will you ‘splain?

I like this version of the question posed by When she’s not scrapping, she’s philosophizing: If a man says something and there is no woman listening, is he still wrong?
Here are an imagined story, a real one, and my question. Imagine a woman who had a beautiful dress she wore for her daughter’s wedding but who didn’t wear it later on because she was saving it for a special occasion. The next time she wore it was for her own burial.
My mom is a saver. She got nice stainless flatware, but then she ended up saving it for company and bought really cheap silver for everyday use. She never again used the sterling that she used to use for company. She got good towels but never let Dad use them because they were for when overnight guests came. They were used twice, and until the day Dad died he had to use the old towels. I’m just as bad, saving nice clothes for a special occasion…and then gaining weight so they don’t fit…and I have to give them to the Salvation Army Thrift Store.
So June, what do you save for when company comes or for a special occasion or “for good” or for whatever reason? Or do you use all your nice china/silver/crystal/linens/clothing because each and every day is a special occasion? It is. Stop saving nice things. Use them.

Dear Ask June,
When I write an e-mail to someone and say something like, “Just wanted to say hi,” I never know whether to put the “hi” in quotes. Technically I guess I’m SAYING “hi,” but it looks so dorky to type, “Just wanted to say, ‘hi.'” Your thoughts?

Dear I’m-so-ding-dang-obsessed-with-Henry June:
May I go spend the summer with Roxie? She says it would be like summer camp, with NO cats. Except the ones she chases up the big old ash tree. And someone would take MY picture every day and kiss MY fat tum.
Can I, Mom? CanIcanIcanIcanIpleasepleasepuhleeeeeze?
Dejectedly yours,

Can you simply call ask June, “Ask June”. You seriously don’t have to come up with a clever title everytime. I have a panic attack for you under the pressure. You have enough pressure having to “perform” for us every day with your wit and charm. Cut yourself some slack, Junie Bird.

Actual grammar question!! The other day at work I gave my supervisor a seminar brochure. I had attached a post-it which simply read, “May I go THIS TIME?” (This because we have a hoggy co-worker who would attend all the in-services if we would allow it. We will call her Co-worker #2) The supervisor returned to me the brochure and had added to the post-it, “Yes, you may.”
Co-worker #1 (not the hoggy one) and I like to think we are the June Gardens of our department, correcting grammatical errors and such. Upon seeing the supervisor’s response, Co-worker #1 said that the correct response would have been, “Yes, you can” rather than “Yes, you may”, whereas I thought “Yes, you may” was appropriate since I was asking permission.
Who’s correct? Or are they both okay?

Dear June,
Did you guys have to convince Marvin’s parents about the two of you, since he’s Jewish and you are not?
Also, any dating tips for me?
The current issue is that I have a date to a baseball game with a nice Jewish guy that I know and I want it to go well. June, this is a guy that can handle his homonyms, he’s a reporter for the Times here in Big City Florida, and his mom was my high school Honors English teacher. It’s just too cute to mess up… So HELP! What do I do to NOT mess it up?
[BTW I’m the gentile-albeit-loves-the-Torah reader who queried about a month and a half ago if I’d be ok again after a break up and you sent me a really nice email. I can say that I AM indeed better and even have been on a few good dates since then.]

Dear Ask June,
How long does it take you to change the sheets with THREE cats “helping” you? And when one gets under the fitted sheet do you just give up and finish making the bed around the cat-shaped lump? No? Just me then. Okay.

Dear June,
As an animal lover, I’ve tried to live in harmony with my neighbor’s FIVE outdoor cats for the last several years. The problem is they use my driveway and the flower bed (right by my front door) for a litter box.
I’m sick of the stench and the flies. What’s the neighborly approach with these people?

Thanks for the crate/great advice, June…I do indeed still have Penny, but have gotten rid of the crate. I decided her ability to escape from the crate even though the door was latched on all three sides with six caribeeners, then she might actually injure herself out of desperation. Also, the only dogs I know that LIKE their crates are the dogs that sleep in their crates at night. However, Penny sleeps on my bed and was destined never to like her crate. So I got rid of it and instead keep her inside my bedroom with a baby gate. She happily sleeps on my bed all day long which is exactly what she did when she escaped from the crate.

I got nothin’. My hair wouldn’t have that much texture if I had a double over-processed perm on a rainy day. My hair is so straight that I WISH it had the wave of Marcia Brady’s locks. I’m tellin’ ya’! Take my hair, PLEASE!
Thanks, folks. I ‘ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waiters and waitresses.

Maybe you should just get some Jeri-curl and call it a day. Just think, you could have 80’s Lionel Richie hair. Or Rick James Superfreak hair.
BTW I have no idea what I am talking about, since my hair is straight and fine like Marcia Brady.
Do you think I watched too much TV growing up?

Look…your legs are thinner than Henry’s!!
My toilet paper rolls take 4.75 seconds to change. I change everybody’s toilet paper, because frankly, I’ve got 4.75 seconds while I’m sitting there doing nothing much. I change toilet paper rolls at friends’ homes, family’s homes… and every single bathroom in my house. It’s just easier that way and I feel some sense of accomplishment when I leave the bathroom.
I have an Ask June: have you ever had an 11 year old cat who has lost half their body weight in 3 weeks and has horrible diarrhea ALL OVER THE PLACE? My enormous fat cat is shrinking before my eyes and the vet cannot find the cause after her blood work came back perfect. Thanks cat lady.

You are so dang skinny! Your face is so thin.
Love that photo of Winston, the way the light is falling behind him, that’s a really good photo. Cats love boxes, they always get in them.
I have a little magnet on my refigerator that says, “One can never have too many cats.” That’s really not true. I’ve had three (the mama and her two babies–I still have one of the babies) at once and I must admit they were a hand full. My one and only, Oscar Snuggles, King of Tidewater, is much easier than three. He is sitting her looking at me wanting me to get up and let him out. It doesn’t mean I don’t miss the other two, because I do, I’m just saying having one is easier. Don’t tell Marvin!

I know you must be up to your ears in hair product suggestions but now, but I’m going to annoy you with one more. Have you ever tried Kiehl’s Stylist Series “Creme with Silk Groom”? It is the best hair product I have ever used and it was recommended to me by a friend who has super, super, curly/frizzy hair; I daresay it would actually challenge yours. I use it because my hair is dry from the LA climate and hair coloring process. I only need to use a tiny bit. I think, if you were to use more than a tiny bit, it might work for you. It makes my dry, fly-away, old lady frizz hair soft and shiney. If/when you’re up for trying something new, give it a shot.

JUNE!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE ON FIRE,MY FRIEND! Wow! Am I glad I waited to get in here this morning and check in on you from here in the country of so. Illinois. OH MY WORD! This was a great post!
Skinny, skinny, skinny you are! And I am DIGGING those shoes. Dang it! Those are cute!
Here’s a question… “Marvin used to like me a lot…” My husband used to like me a lot, too. I wonder why that changed in both of our cases? Maybe because I would rather check out your site than talk to him sometimes?????
Also? Why does my Dad go fishing everyday, rain or shine, and never catched anything? Why?????
I heart Henry. (And Winston, too.)

Dear June, am I to assume that all the shameless begging and not-so-subtle hinting means that you’re really never going to give me Henry?
And is it a set of tweezers or a pair of tweezers, and what is one side/arm of the tweezers called?

Reading this at 7 A.M. Trying not to wake up Otherpapa with my guffawing. That book in you is trying to worm its way out of you. Better hurry though.If you want Oprah to interview you, I just saw The Enquirer headlines on AOL that said she only has three years to live.

Damn it June! I have a tiny little baby, who used to be sleeping, but when I read your very slow answer to poor Carrie I forgot and laughed so loudly I woke her up (the baby, not Carrie). So you better just get on over to my place and put her back to sleep (the baby, not Carrie) because I BLAME YOU. My poor scatterbrained parenting certainly has nothing to do with it whatsoever.